Letters to the Editor
Ben Sen
Published Letters: 541 Editor's Choice: 98
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THE RIGHT HAS RULED FOR FAR TOO LONG
[Read the article: Matthew Dowd's not-so-miraculous conversion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The other thing about guys like Dowd is just how typical they have become. But beware: I might be talking about you if you don't realize what loyality and solidarity means--and few do.
How does the party (the Democrats) that does NOT represent totally the interest of wealthy "corporate" covert whites and poor confused overt racist and homophobic whites continue to be in a "one downer" position?
Even now, with a total jerk in office who threatens the entire world order--very little is getting done because of the fear of the solidarity that exists ON THE RIGHT.
Liberals and Democrats don't need enemies when they have themselves. It's an odd paradox. The very independence that is the hallmark of liberalism is the undoing of the greatest aspirations of those who want a better world.
That's how the fascists have gained control throughout history. The "good" folks can't agree, the reactionaries unite, and the next thing we know a Franco or Mussolini is in power and the opposition find their phones tapped, their liberties eroded, their leaders silenced, and nobody knows how it happened.
I say fight now. And fight now by not letting the smart rats convince people their candidate has to be "perfect." There is no shame in voting for the candidate that most closely "approximates," your views. Religion and politics are not the same thing: and this is where the difference starts.
The crazies are the ones who have mistaken political leaders for the messiah. It is time for America to grow-up, especially those who don't vote, or don't have "any hope" in the system to get off their ass and push a lever--THE RIGHT HAS RULED BECAUSE OF YOU FOR FAR TOO LONG AND TIME IS RUNNING OUT.
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White, Male, Married to a Sick Brave Wife and Self-Made
[Read the article: John Edwards live]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not sure much else is needed.
He's gonna have to stick his foot way way down his mouth to blow it--or horror of horrors a chippie will emerge to blow the whistle on him.
Apart from that, I'm not sure he isn't the leading contender, especially once the question becomes: who is the most likely to win?
This is America! Look who runs this country! Bring up issues and "fair play," and you are either an idealistic fool, or in the opinion business and have to fill up the page with something.
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You Forgot Somebody
[Read the article: The greatest living critic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The person who set the stage for Clive James, at least in this country is not named in this review--and it's not Edmund Wilson or Pauline Kael.
In her book, AGAINST INTERPRETATION, Susan Sontag attacked the "high culture, low culture," distinction and freed at least the post WWII generation from snobs and the mobs. Clive James made a career out of it.
I don't know if he pays tribute to her in writing, but he definitely does in terms of being a practitioner. Sontag hasn't been gone that long, and everybody but herself knew she was a much better critic and political polemicist than she was a novelist, but I don't think that's reason for her to be forgotten for what she did best.
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A Revelation
[Read the article: The American media's fringe ideological view of Pelosi's trip]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd get excited over this except it isn't anything that hasn't been commonly known since Viet Nam.
The right, the militarists, the corporations, and the indifferent rule America by proxy.
What else is new? I don't even consider it radical any longer, just a statement of pure, unmitigated fact--complicated by those who are just discovering it and somehow think it's a revelation.
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I'm Sure
[Read the article: Iraq: Why the media failed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's astonishing really. I saw one letter that said OIL.
Why isn't Gary bringing it up? Why isn't it the news? Maybe it's just a coincidence oil profits have never been higher than during the Bush/Cheney era. Why haven't the oil executives been asked to return to Washinton to explain the approaching deal to "privitize" the oil fields?
Why indeed!
Hey, maybe Americans don't want to face it. Maybe the media for the most part knows that. Maybe the last folks without a vested interest are here in blogland. (?) Maybe the fact that the rest of the world thinks the war is about oil simply makes them dead wrong.
Maybe it is insidious to think something that despicable could actually happen--all those dead soldiers for what--so a few stinking rich men can get stinking richer? The Vice-President, and President of the United States of America could never do anything like that--not in a democracy--even if one comes from the oil industry, and the other is so dumb it doesn't matter.
Maybe the people who think so are paranoid conspiracy freaks, yeah, that's it, the radical fringe who just want to make trouble so they can get a commie homo in office after they lock Cheney and Bush up. Yeah, that's it. I'm sure.